


Baby Girl

by waffle_Atronach



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Baby, Dragonborn defeated by diapers, Family, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, baby girl loves her big new Dovahkiin friend, hulking hero has to babysit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 15:09:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17024943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waffle_Atronach/pseuds/waffle_Atronach
Summary: Original Prompt:BIG MEN WITH SOFT HEARTS (FLUFF)How about a manly man DB who is the most merciless and bloodthirsty of warriors (at least that’s what the stories say), and we get to see him being all soft over a baby.Maybe it was the result of a one-night-stand? Maybe it was just an abandoned infant? Either way DB has to take care of the baby, and he is just so SOFT. Cooing and awing over the baby with lots of fluffy stuff.Story:Geirn goes into a cave to fight some bandits and comes out with a baby and a lot of anxiety about it. And it's a three day walk to Whiterun.❤





	Baby Girl

Geirn Windrime, Thane of Whiterun and Hjaalmarch, Dragonborn, Slayer of the World Eater, and scourge of bandits everywhere, stared down at the creature before him with absolute horror and uncertainty. When a new bandit clan had popped up, hidden in the mountains north of Whiterun, never striking the same place twice and interrupting trade so thoroughly it had even affected the Civil War, he’d agreed the situation was serious enough to warrant his taking a short break from dragonslaying to help out. The guards hadn’t known where they’d holed up, but he had been able to figure it out by searching out the area with the least attacks, but the most dead guards. After that, finding a settlement of forty or so in the mountains hadn’t been very difficult at all when one could get a view from above.

 

She stared back, this last of the bandit clan in the caverns, her big blue eyes blinked at him curiously, the little red-brown curls on her head fluffing to the side as she examined him. Then she chortled, and he flinched, eyes widening as chubby little arms reached up for him. Despite the bloodstains and dragonbone armor, she cooed and demanded to be held.

 

Geirn looked over his shoulder as if begging someone to appear and help him, but he’d thoroughly slaughtered everyone that had come rushing at him with a weapon in their hands. There was no one left but him.

 

Feeling incredibly awkward, Geirn removed his gauntlets and set them aside, reaching down into the makeshift cradle of a flower basket and lifting the child under the arms. Her head fell back and she squealed at the ceiling, and he belatedly remembered something about supporting the head? “Erm…there there,” he said, laying her against his breastplate and patting her back gingerly. She was soft and warm in his hands, feeling absurdly small, and despite his trepidation a warm, almost giggly feeling hit his chest like a weird, sort of pleasant punch.

 

The small face scrunched up at the feel of the hard, cold dragonbone, then opened and released a wail louder and more terrifying than any dragon’s cry. Geirn immediately held her at arm’s length again, staring. She shut up and sniffled at him, the sadness on her round face pulling at something inside him.

 

“Oh, Mara help me,” he muttered, half hoping the goddess herself would materialize and take the little one off his hands. Alas, no such divine intervention was forthcoming, and so, rather than his usual roundup of the best bits of loot and armor, Geirn found himself scavenging anything he might even remotely associate with a child. He wished he’d brought Lydia or Jordis, but the Housecarls had earned their vacation together without his company. Geirn was considering giving them one of the houses as a wedding present. Still, either of them would know what they were doing far better than he would, right? Either one of them could bash in a head just as easily as any man he’d ever met, but didn’t women at least have some vague knowledge of babies taught to them while growing up? He certainly hadn’t, and he was ruing it with every fiber of his being.

 

There was a pile of square cloths set near her, a smaller dirty pile in a basket that made him gag when he got too close, a fur cut oddly that he supposed was supposed to be wrapped around her, but after an increasingly frustrating time trying to figure it out, rolling the girl in it over and over again while she giggled like it was a grand game, he gave up. There was milk, not enough to his way of thinking, but she’d drink less than he, surly. Still, he wasn’t about to camp out in the cave with a baby and a bunch of corpses. He’d get her to the nearest settlement and hand her over to the villagers there. They’d know what to do far better than he ever could.

 

He hoped.

 

Ten minutes outside the cave and he got his first scare. She’d started crying the moment they emerged, and he’d wondered if she’d never seen sunlight before. He hoped she had, poor mite. It wasn’t until he turned into the wind and realized that it was a bit nippy…Geirn glanced down at the big blue eyes staring miserably up from the hole in the blankets he’d wrapped her in as thoroughly as he could, tears in her eyes and frosting on her cheeks, and cursed. “Oh, sorry,” he said absently, finding somewhere a bit more sheltered from the wind and taking his breastplate off, feeling naked in just his gambeson, shoving the thing into his pack and pausing, holding up the pack by its straps and staring at them.

 

“I’m an idiot,” he sighed, reaching in and unwinding the complicated wrap that he now realized was supposed to go over his shoulders, and strapping the ball of furs holding the infant to his chest. She burbled, all smiles again with his body heat radiating out to her, cheek against this chest and looking up at him happily. Geirn found himself smiling back at her. “Well, Baby, let’s hope nothing attacks us with me like this.”

 

Perhaps some Divine was listening after all, for they encountered nothing the rest of the day, walking along the road toward Whiterun. Considering this, Geirn figured that the bandits must have slaughtered more than the travelers.

 

He made camp in a shallow cave that was sheltered enough to hold the heat of a fire, putting Baby down and unwrapping her from the furs, then gagging a bit as the smell hit him. Thus followed the most harrowing feat of his life, peeling her clothing off and discovering it positively saturated with foul-smelling slime. Something told him she wouldn’t like a dip in the cold pond outside any more than he would, so he boiled some water (the boiling process hastened by his very rudimentary flames magic, but desperate times called for desperate measures), and used a linen wrap to clean her as thoroughly as he could.

 

She was ticklish.

 

Geirn paused and glanced up at her face the first time she giggled, but by the time she was clean he was grinning broadly and wiggling her legs like she was running as she beamed up at him, arms flapping up and down. She was a chubby little thing, and he blew a raspberry on her round tummy the way he remembered his mother doing to him, and she shrieked with laughter, making him chuckle. Folding one of the furs over her, he threw the linen wrap in the fire and took the pot out to dump the water, rinse it, then boil water in again to clean it. He suspected he was never going to be able to cook in it again, with that memory.

 

A wail from the cave made him drop the pot altogether, rushing inside. Somehow, Baby had wriggled out of the fur, and was over by where he’d stored his armor, covered in goosebumps and complaining about it at the top of her lungs.

 

Geirn sighed. “If you don’t like the cold you shouldn’t have wandered from the fire,” he scolded her lightly, picking her up (much to her evident delight) and returning her to her furs. Pulling one of the squares of linen he’d found next to her, he tried to remember how the last one had been wrapped around her. Honestly, it had been so caked in…his stomach heaved just thinking about it. He’d been covered in guts and blood, stepped over rotten and bloated corpses, faced Falmer in their nests and cleansed a diseased hut infested with skeever, but nothing had ever affected him like that smell.

 

He looked down and realized that Baby wasn’t where he left her.

 

“Baby?” he called, looking around frantically, then pulling her away from the fire right as her little chubby hand reached for a bright orange coal. She cried in protest, and he held her to his chest, bouncing her a bit like he vaguely remembered seeing mothers do to their infants. He’d never paid much attention before, figuring if he ever had a child, he’d know what to do by then. Or he’d adopt older. Right now, he was strongly leaning toward adopting older.

 

Laying her back down, he spent the next half hour in a battle against two opponents: Figuring out how a diaper worked, and Baby wiggling and crawling away at what he was sure was the infant variation of Whirlwind Sprint. By the time he finally gave up and tied the sides up over her shoulders in a way he was absolutely certain wasn’t correct, he was exhausted, and she was crabby.

 

Thanking Mara he’d found a bottle and had the mental capacity to figure that much out, at least, he put milk in the bottle and held her against him in one arm, making sure her head was supported this time as she looked up at him beseechingly. He put the bottle to her lips, and smiled when she latched on to it.

 

Then she spat it out and started crying.

Sighing, he pulled the top off the bottle and looked inside, wondering what was wrong with it. “I don’t drink milk myself, lass, but you don’t need to worry about anyone caring you’re a milk-drinker for a few years.”

 

Baby continued to cry, and he sighed, feeling in dire need of a drink. Reaching for his mead, sitting near the fire to warm it, he paused and replaced it with the bottle, relaxing back to wait. Well, relaxing as much as he could with a crying baby on one arm, anyway. After a few minutes, he grabbed the bottle back up and tried again. This time she sucked at it hungrily, and Geirn couldn’t help the smile that crossed his face.

 

“You’re a cute little thing, aren’t you?” he cooed at her, grinning down into those bright blue eyes, noting the way they were starting to droop. Leaning back against the fire-warmed rock, he stared into the flames and waited for her to finish her bottle. By the time he was finally able to place her back in her basket and flip the furs over her, tucking them on either side carefully, he had just enough energy to drop down beside it before passing right out.

 

❤

 

Hungry wailing startled him awake far too early. He’d curled around the basket some time in the night, resulting in him being commanded awake at point-blank range. The return of The Smell didn’t improve his mood any. The fact that predawn light was barely creeping in didn’t help.

 

Thus followed a repeat of the previous evening; Geirn washing away The Smell with warm water while Baby tried to alert all of Tamriel to the indignity. He burned the cloth again, hoping he reached somewhere he could leave her before he ran out of them. Rolling her up in the furs improved her mood again. Geirn smiled tiredly as he held her against his chest, staring into the fire. “You’re not tired at all, are you?” he surmised, yawning. In response, she wriggled her little arm out and grabbed his beard. “Thought not,” he grunted.

 

He woke up again just after dawn, Baby still burbling quietly on his chest and feeling more exhausted than he could rightly remember.

 

Walking that day was a new kind of adventure. The weather was fine and clear, if cold, and he turned Baby in the little carry fur so she could look around, her wide blue eyes taking in everything with evident delight. He found himself talking to her, which surprised him. He wasn’t much on talking to his normal companions. If he talked to them like he was talking to her, they probably would have thought him drunk. He barely recognized the high, cooing voice he explained the landscape in. The arm she’d worked free waved about, and he grabbed it and waved with her, simply because she seemed to enjoy it.

 

“Those are rabbit prints there,” he told her, pointing her entire arm at the tracks. “It’s going north. That way,” he elaborated, moving her arm to point in the appropriate direction. “Dawnstar’s up that way and to the west. We’ll be hitting the road toward Whiterun again any time now.”

 

Baby burbled agreeably and he smiled. “You’re a smart lass, aren’t you?” he told her. She made the agreeable sound again and he laughed.

               

“Give me your valuables and I won’t gut you like a fish!”

               

Geirn looked up in surprise at the thief that had come out of hiding, brandishing a dagger at him. The Khajiit’s fur blended with his armor, an all-over brown broken by the mismatched elven gauntlets and blue mage’s hood he wore. It had been a long, long time since a thief had dared accost him. He’d almost assumed they’d closed up shop altogether. “Let me pass and I won’t kill you,” he rumbled dangerously, normally enough to send them scurrying back to whatever skeever hole they’d crawled out of.

 

Apparently he wasn’t as intimidating as normal, for the thief laughed shortly. “Nice try, baby man, but you do not scare me.”

 

“Then you’re a fool,” Geirn replied, hefting his mace with one hand and covering Baby’s eyes with the other. With a cry, he barreled in, bashing the thief’s head in before the Khajiit could react.

 

Baby didn’t like that much.

 

“Shhhh, shhh…” he soothed, lowering his mace and taking her out of the pack to quiet her. Holding her against his chest and bouncing her slightly, he looked down into her wailing little face and felt guilt constrict his chest. “The wilderness is no place for a baby,” he told her, moving around the rapidly cooling corpse toward the road. “It’s been oddly pleasant having you around, lass, but you belong with a family, safe inside walls. Maybe one day you’ll go adventuring again, when you’re a big, strong lass like Lydia or Jordis.” Baby was quieting, but as he looked up at the sky to take stock of the sun, he realized he should probably feed the poor mite. “They’re my housecarls,” he added, looking for a likely place to make a camp. “Great warriors, the both of them. Wouldn’t have minded settling down with either, but they were set the moment they laid eyes on each other. Just as well, I suppose. My life’s not all that suited to settling, and all that romantic, courting stuff always made me uncomfortable. Give me a dragon to fight any day.” Glancing down at her and picturing trying to fight a dragon with her along, he hastily added, “Er, except today. Don’t know what gods might be listening,” he added to her in a mutter.

 

Finally finding a spot that had served travelers as camp many times before, judging from the remains of a fire pit and the rocks and logs rolled into seating around it, he set up her basket and wrapped her up in it. She protested, loudly, and he propped her against a log to watch him make the fire, a smile warming his eyes as she waved her arms and giggled at the licks of flame.

 

He was getting used to feeding her by this time, and he immediately set snow to melting in his designated diaper pot. There was very little wind, so he cleaned her up, still gagging slightly at The Smell, changed and dried her quickly, and wrapped her back up in furs, worriedly casting Healing Hands to make sure she hadn’t caught a chill anyway. She seemed to like the spell, breaking out of her unhappy whimpers at the cold to chortle and grab at the magic arcs of golden light around her, staring at her fat little fingers, her hand opening and closing as she looked for what she’d tried to grasp.

 

“Never could get the hang of magic,” he told her, setting her on his lap and bouncing slightly. “Memorized a few spells I needed, but even that took me forever. Healing myself and someone else, a bit of fire for when the wood’s too damp, a nice little cantrip for leading me out of places when I get turned around, that kind of thing.”

 

“Ooo wooo,” Baby replied, patting the hand holding her up with both her soft palms. He tried to picture those sweet little hands holding a weapon one day and failed utterly.

 

“We’ll be in Whiterun tomorrow,” he told her, and odd ache in his chest. “There’s a Temple to Kynareth there. Danica’s a good sort. Patched me up more than once, poor woman. Reminds me a bit of my mother, Divines rest her soul. Likes to nag me about being more careful with myself. Of course, my mother never got the chance to remind me that I’m not as young as I used to be every other sentence.” He grimaced. “Defeated a dragon god, vanquished an ancient powerful Dragonborn, stopped a crazed vampire from putting out the sun, stopped countless evil sorcerers, necromancers, bandit and cult leaders, and petty scum, and what do I get? Told I’m getting too old. Feh!”

 

Baby made a thoughtful noise, playing with the edge of fur peeking out at his wrist.

 

“Maybe I am getting too old,” he mused, looking down at the wispy curls picking up the red-gold from the fire. “But if I’m not doing these things, who is? Still, it’s going to be too lonely to hang around the house once Lydia and Jordis move out. I tried getting Serana to stay, after she got rid of her vampirism, but, I don’t know,” he sighed. “Something about me must have put her off. Maybe if I were good at words like the bards, or…” He shook his head, turning Baby so he could watch her face as he bounced her up and down. A huge grin showed off all her toothless gums, a soft happy squealing rising and falling with pitch as she went up and down. “Don’t have much trouble talking to you, at least,” he rumbled a laugh.

 

His one-sided conversation dried up, he laid her over one of the logs and tapped her back. He wasn’t sure why he was supposed to do that, but he’d seen enough mother’s do it to know he should. They usually did it over their shoulders, but he didn’t fancy having baby vomit running down his quiver a second time. She burped, loud and long enough he beamed with pride before he realized what he was doing, then fell asleep against his chest as he quietly ate some jerked venison and hardtack.

 

Geirn carefully wrapped her back up in her carry thing, strapped her to his chest, and made for Whiterun, the loneliness that had been creeping up on him these last few months surrounding him with the silently falling snow.

 

❤

 

There was a time, years ago, when the streets would fall silent as he walked through, the threat of his presence felt by even those he would never harm. Of course, that was before he bought Breezehome, before he moved in and made a point to be seen out and about, never doing harm and, indeed, doing small favors and kindnesses for the townsfolk. Fearful, uncertain watchfulness had been replaced with respectful silence, then with polite greetings, then with friendly calls and hails.

 

None of that held a candle to the silence that followed him as he walked into the town carrying a baby.

 

Mila Valentia was the first to say anything to him, and he’d managed to reach the Wind District before she worked up the nerve. The girl was quite fond of him, since he’d invested in her mother’s stall, hoping to help out the poor woman without looking like he was coming on to her. Carlotta had managed to raise her daughter on her own quite well, and when Belethor had gotten caught in a vampire attack when that whole mess started, she’d felt secure enough to ask for an outright loan from him, and had bought the general store. She was still fending off advances, but the store had flourished under her management, and she’d even adopted a second girl, a little Imperial named Lucia that had wandered into town one day, homeless.

 

Maybe he should have been wishing for Carlotta’s help on the road instead of his housecarls’. Ah, well, wishful thinking was still wishful thinking.

 

“Did you have a baby?” Mila asked him curiously.

 

He halted, staring at her, aghast. “Men don’t ‘have’ babies, Mila,” he told her, trying not to shudder at the thought.

 

“Oh, well, I mean, is that your baby?” she corrected, reaching up and taking the infant’s questing hand in hers.

 

“Well, I, er, I’m taking her to Danica,” he finally managed, utterly flustered.

 

“What’s her name?” the child asked, grinning back at the smiling baby.

 

Belatedly, Geirn realized perhaps calling a baby “Baby” wasn’t quite as accepted as when he’d named his dog ‘Dog.’ Frantically, he cast his mind about for a name, any name. “Olivia,” he blurted out his mother’s name.

 

“That’s pretty,” Mila approved. Carlotta’s voice echoed from far off, calling her daughter. “Bye Geirn, bye Olivia!”

 

Without thinking, Geirn grabbed Baby’s—Olivia’s—hand and waved at the girl’s retreating form, then flushed under his beard. “Ah, well,” he cleared his throat gruffly, turning to walk toward the Temple of Kynareth. Every step seemed to weigh more, and the happy, curious burbling from his chest did little to ease the strange tightness inside him.

 

“Geirn!” Danica cried when he walked in, falling silent and staring at the infant.

 

“Hello,” he said awkwardly, then pointed to Olivia. Danica seemed to get the point, for she rushed forward, assisting him divesting the carry fur, then setting the infant down on one of the benches to unwrap the various layers keeping the Skyrim chill from her. Geirn hovered anxiously the entire time, his chest still oddly tight, but the coiled knot of anxiety in his gut easing as the healer remarked on the baby’s health and well-being.

 

“Poor little thing,” she finally said, folding the nappy cloth over her in a way he struggled to follow and securing it easily. It looked much more secure than anything he’d managed. Picking Olivia up, she bounced her lightly. “You did a good job bringing her here, Geirn. Her wrapping was a little…unorthodox, but she seems cheerful, at least.”

 

“She’s a fine lass,” he said, swallowing the lump in his throat as he watched those familiar big blue eyes take in the Temple.

 

“Did you need anything else?” Danica asked, looking at him curiously, then frowned in concern. “Geirn?”

 

He shook his head, breaking out of his reverie. “Actually…”

 

❤

 

“Who’s a good lass?” Geirn cooed, bouncing the small child on his knee. She burbled and reached up, grabbing the long grey hairs of his beard and tugging. “Now, now,” he laughed, rescuing them from her chubby fingers, “I’m fond of those.”

 

“Overly fond,” a female voice said in deep amusement. The pretty young woman with bright blue eyes and curling brown hair reached over, hefting the infant up with a “Woooh!” that caused the baby to giggle in glee.

 

“Wave bye-bye to Granddad now,” she said, kissing the child’s cheek. “It’s naptime.”

 

Geirn pouted at her. “Leaving already, Olivia?”

 

She snorted, “I meant it’s naptime for you,” she sassed, then smiled, leaning down and kissing the top of his head. “Love you, Da.”

 

“Love you too, Baby Girl.”


End file.
